Skiing in July? It could happen this year, but California’s days of bountiful snow are numbered. The Sierra Nevada snowpack, which provides 60 percent of the state’s water via a vast network of dams and reservoirs, has already been diminished by human-induced climate change and if emissions levels aren’t reduced, the snowpack could largely disappear during droughts, a new study finds.

Each year, AGU invites the Editors-in-Chief of the organization’s 20 journals to a retreat with members of the publications team and other senior staff to discuss strategic issues across the journals. This year’s meeting was held in San Diego, CA, and started with a field trip to the Anza-Borrego Desert.

San Bernadino National Forest landslide video One of a number of new landslide videos that have been published in the last few days comes from San Bernadino National Forest in Southern California, triggered by the latest in a procession of intense rainfall events in recent weeks. This is a very impressive video of a large landslide in the Forest Falls area. In many ways the most interesting aspect is the high …

Right now it’s incredibly important for scientists to hammer home why science is essential, important and needs to be practiced rigorously, transparently and without censorship. It’s clear that we can no longer limit ourselves to broader impact statements in our next grant applications. I thought I’d do my part by starting a new blog series and highlighting United States geoscientists and their work in action.

A handful of faults lining the border of California and Nevada may be near the point of rupture, according to a new study assessing earthquakes in the region as far back as 1,400 years ago. Scientists report that earthquakes in a fault network east of the Sierra Nevada Mountains are not random, but are likely triggered from stress bestowed by past earthquakes. This same type of stress has built up in six faults near Death Valley, California, and Reno, Nevada, according to the new research.

In a paper in Geophysical Research Letters, Georgie Bennett and colleagues have examined the response of Californian earthflows to the ongoing drought. They have found that the landslide have slowed markedly as conditions have become drier.